Defending Philosophical Knowledge

This dissertation concerns whether philosophy as a discipline can, and does, produce philosophical knowledge. Specifically, this dissertation concerns several prominent arguments for philosophical skepticism. Some support philosophical skepticism by arguing that the philosophical practice of appealing to intuitions to justify philosophical beliefs is illegitimate because either intuitions are not a legitimate kind of evidence or intuitions are an unreliable source of justification. Others argue that philosophical knowledge is untenable because philosophers rarely, if ever, resolve their philosophical disagreements despite spending their professional lives attempting to do so. In brief, the purpose of this dissertation is to defend philosophical knowledge from these arguments by showing that philosophical knowledge is not threatened by either intuition or disagreement skepticism